Army chief lays out cuts in Europe

Saturday

Jan 28, 2012 at 12:01 AMJan 28, 2012 at 1:00 AM

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon’s decision announced yesterday to take two heavy armor brigades out of Europe in 2013 and 2014 will not necessarily force NATO allies to shoulder more of the load if ground forces are needed for a large-scale conflict in the region, said Gen. Raymond Odierno, the Army chief of staff.

Odierno said the military will work hard to mitigate the impact of the shift on European allies, who rely heavily on U.S. military might to provide the bulk of the forces in a ground campaign.

The move to shift brigades out of Europe is part of a broader Pentagon plan to cut the size of the Army by 80,000 soldiers and restructure the service to ensure the military has the capabilities it needs to go to war. Odierno said the mandate to reduce the force from 570,000 soldiers during the height of the Iraq war to 490,000 by 2017 will force the military to rely more on the National Guard and reserves, particularly if the United States gets into two major, long-term combat operations at the same time.

Odierno said he is comfortable with the reduction in the force. But he suggested that the United States will now have to keep its reserve forces at a higher level of readiness than it did before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan pressed tens of thousands of citizen soldiers into service to buttress active-duty Army forces.

He also said his support for the cuts hinges on the fact that the Army will have more than five years to make the reductions, largely through normal attrition. He acknowledged, however, that a small number of officers might have to be forced to leave.

As the Iraq war dragged on, the Pentagon had to recruit thousands of additional active-duty soldiers and beef up and repeatedly tap reserve brigades to meet the combat demands there and in Afghanistan. For roughly eight years, the United States battled in both countries at the same time, stretching and straining the Army.

Meeting that type of commitment with an Army of 490,000 soldierswould not work, Odierno said.

“Do I have the capability to go into Korea and meet the requirements? Yes,” he said, when asked about the risks of a smaller force. “Do I have the ability to stay there for 10 years? No.”

If the military had to fight two large, simultaneous, long-term wars, he said, the United states would rely more heavily on its allies in the region and call for a massive mobilization of the reserves.

“Because of the fact that they,” a reference to National Guard troops and reserves, “have been involved in combat operations for a very long period of time, we are going to come up with a readiness model that will keep them at a little bit higher level than they have been in the past,” Odierno said. And if needed, he said, the United States would use reserves to “buy us time to increase the active component” to wage two large, intensive wars.

NATO allies have long relied on U.S. ground forces to wage such conflicts, so cutting the European-based force in half will be met with reservations from those leaders.

But one senior defense official said the United States is working on a variety of options to compensate for the loss. Those could include further U.S. commitments to NATO’s rapid response force, which includes up to 25,000 forces provided by the allies. There also likely will be additional multinational military exercises. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the details have not been finalized.

Odierno said the two brigades being taken out of Europe — both heavy armor units — will be eliminated rather than reassigned somewhere in the United States. Both are based in Germany.

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